Introduction

AMICALL was a transnational action research project, co-ordinated by COMPAS, exploring the role of Local and Regional Authorities (LRAs) in communicating with their citizens about the difficult questions raised by migration. This country context paper reviews the context of the project in the UK, giving an overview of the migration profile, integration philosophy, attitudes to migrants and local and regional authority structure in the country. It is intended both to ground and guide UK case study fieldwork for the project, and to provide the necessary context for developing transnational comparison and knowledge exchange.